Finals Night

A great finals night last night saw Richard Nichol win the Gadsden Handicap, Ricardo Paredes win the Boucher Plate and John Thompson win the Boucher Cup.

In getting to the Gadsden Handicap final, neither Rich (no. 1 seed) nor Ricardo (no. 7 seed) dropped a single set against their opponents. Rich made his way past Paul Pearson, Andrew Fountain and Alan Lade to secure his place in the final while Ricardo took on Gareth Thomas, Dan Spinney and Ian Bishop. Phillip Febrey scored for a battle of a match, each game starting at -18 for Rich and -12 for Ricardo, with the final result 2-1 (15-13, 14-16, 15-7) to Rich. This properly tired them both out in advance of a second final each later in the evening…!

The second final of the night was the Boucher Plate between Ricardo Paredes (no. 1 seed) and Brian Pate (no. 3 seed) – Ricardo again didn’t drop a set on his way to the final (knocking out Andrew Fountain and Paul Pearson) whilst Brian had a slightly tougher time – after his first round against Sam Hume, it took a five-set cliff-hanger to get past Iain Locke. When it came to the crunch, Ricardo had enough in the tank to come back from a 1-2 deficit to beat Brian 3-2 (9-2, 8-10, 7-9, 9-5, 9-5) – another cracking game – Simon Chubb the scorer.

The final big ticket event was the Boucher Cup between John Thompson (no. 1 seed) and Richard Nichol (no. 6 seed) – John had only dropped one set on his way to the final, knocking out Andrew Fountain, Simon Chubb (who took that set) and Joey Williams, whilst again Rich didn’t drop a single set on his way past Ricardo Paredes, Dan Spinney and Mark Simmons. With Andy Matthews as the scorer, John managed to take the title 3-0 (9-4, 9-0, 10-8) against Rich – a tough game when you’ve already got one final in your legs – well done John! Your name on that cup again…

A fantastic end to the annual tournaments! Well done all our finalists.